It is used in the Iliad one hundred and forty-seven times. The name Ἀργεῖοι is employed oftener, namely, one hundred and seventy-seven times in the plural, besides eleven times in the singular as a personal epithet: and Ἀχαιοὶ much more frequently still.
His epithets for the three designations.
If we observe the shadings, attached to these words respectively by means of the epithets which Homer annexes to them, we shall find they establish perceptible distinctions.
The epithets of Δαναοὶ are exclusively military epithets:
1. ἥρωες.
2. θεράποντες Ἄρηος.
3. φιλοπτόλεμοι.
4. αἰχμηταί.
5. ἀσπισταί.
6. ἴφθιμοι.
7. ταχύπωλοι.
The epithets of Ἀργεῖοι are as follows:
1. ἰόμωροι, Il. iv. 242. xiv. 479.
2. ἀπειλάων ἀκόρητοι, Il. xiv. 479.
3. θωρηκτοί, Il. xxi. 429.
4. φιλοπτόλεμοι, Il. xix. 269.
5. ἐλεγχέες, Il. iv. 242.
Upon these we may observe, first, that they are few in number; secondly, that they are used with extreme rarity; being only applied in four passages altogether, whereas the word Δαναοὶ has epithets in twenty-two. Thirdly, this word only twice in the whole of the poems has a military epithet attached to it. For I must follow those, who do not translate ἰόμωροι as corresponding with ἐγχεσίμωροι: (1) because the Greeks were not archers, (2) because the derivation from ἴα, ‘the voice,’ giving the sense of braggart, harmonises exactly with the accompanying phrase ἀπειλάων ἀκόρητοι: as well as (3) for the presumptive, but in Homer by no means conclusive, reason, that ἴον in composition is long.
The epithets of Ἀχαιοὶ are numerous, highly varied, and of very frequent use. They are these: